Tom Warren: "While Intel is trying to keep the Windows tree healthy, Microsoft is hoping that the leaves don't start to drop off before its own family of Surface devices are fully ready. Redmond isn't 'priming the pump' here, it's planting seeds for the future. If Microsoft is successful then it could be the world's biggest Windows OEM in just a few years. The future is Surface." You just have to look at the difference in build quality and supplied software between OEM devices and Surface even though Surface is cheaper to realise that the age of Windows OEMs is coming to an end. The writing's on the wall, and the OEMs know it: there's no future for them in Windows.

Microsoft trying to shift from a commodity software vendor to a hardware oriented company would be almost as profoundly stupid a form of corporate seppuku as Apple taking a giant hit off the bong and deciding to drop it's hardware business and focus on selling OS X. The only thing it'll accomplish is pushing them further towards eventual marginalization and irrelevance as the OEMs find a new horse to run.